Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a novel about guilt, morality and emotion. Throughout the novel many characters espouse the idea of reason and willpower over emotion – that if you have sufficient mental faculties you can prevent emotion from getting in the way of your actions and behave truly rationally. The student Raskolnikov believes this with all his heart when he sets out to murder a pawnbroker for the good of the community. This concept is quickly proved to be fundamentally flawed, however, as his inner guilt throws him into emotional turmoil and his brain attempts to protect him from the ugly truth of his actions. Raskolnikov displays several textbook examples of psychological defense mechanisms throughout the course of the novel, proving that even the most thorough reasoning and intellect cannot prevent the emotional and psychological response to a crisis.

Psychological “defense mechanisms” are the brain’s way of protecting itself from full awareness of unpleasant thoughts or behaviors. In Raskolnikov’s case, they are his brain’s way of protecting him from the full reality of what he has done, and the guilt associated with that reality. Some are more primitive, living in the subconscious and relying on emotion, and some are more complex and rely on conscious thought. Raskolnikov displays many of them over the course of the novel, as his brain attempts to come to terms with what he has done. Here are just a few examples.

Dissociation
A relatively primitive defense mechanism, Dissociation involves losing track of time; the narrative of life becoming disjointed. It allows the person to disconnect from reality for a while, seeking psychological shelter by escaping to a different sense of time. At one point in the novel, Raskolnikov gets confused about whether he has been to the police station yet. He states, “Bah! I am mixing it up; that was then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now…” (P. 192) An action that he associates with guilt (looking at the sock) causes his brain to try to escape to a different time, a time before he had interacted with the police. Dissociation appears in many places in the novel, with Raskolnikov frequently getting mixed up with regard to who was present during a certain time, whether he had said something or just thought it, and even with regard to his dreams and their relationship to reality.

Displacement
Displacement is when a person redirects their thoughts or actions away from the actual source of their problem, sometimes referred to as “taking it out on someone else.” It allows the person to vent their frustrations when they cannot take them out on the actual source. Raskolnikov is angry at Luzhin and lashes out at him almost from the very beginning, and his anger isn’t necessarily warranted to the extent that he experiences it. Getting mad at Luzhin is a way for his brain to release the feelings of anger and guilt that he feels towards himself without hurting someone he cares about.

Acting Out
Acting Out is when a person performs extreme behaviors in an attempt to express thoughts or feelings that they can’t comfortably acknowledge. The classic example of acting out is a child throwing a temper tantrum. Raskolnikov acts out for much of the middle part of the novel; the most noteworthy example is when he runs into Zametov at a cafe and makes a speech explaining exactly how he committed the murder, under the guise of conjecture. He makes this speech in a creepy whisper, standing too close to Zametov, and tops it off with a strange laugh, so that Zametov is convinced he is a madman. This allows him the freedom to get the confession off his chest in a safe way, a way where he knows nobody will actually believe him. He continues to act out for the next few chapters, saying and doing things that offend and incense others and lend credence to their belief that he is delirious.

Rationalization
Rationalization involves providing a seemingly-plausible alternate explanation for why something is happening, an explanation that sounds more reasonable or is easier to deal with than the real one. Raskolnikov blames his guilty conscience and crazy dreams and thoughts on a physical illness. “ ‘It is because I am very ill,’ he decided grimly at last, ‘I have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know what I am doing…I shall get well and I shall not worry…’ “ (P. 169) Blaming his guilty feelings on an illness allows him to distance himself from the reality of the situation, and also ties in to his belief that he can control his emotions – he comes up with a seemingly-logical reason for his emotional actions in order to devalue them.

Intellectualization
Intellectualization is the blaming of every emotional reaction on some kind of intellectual reason, finding an explanation for unwanted emotions that ignores the obvious source of them. While waiting in the police station Raskolnikov begins to get nervous, but intellectualizes the problem by saying “It’s a pity there’s no air here…it’s stifling…It makes one’s head dizzier than ever…and one’s mind too…” (P. 148)

The use of intellectualization ties in particularly strongly to the overall theme of reason over emotion and highlights the importance of these defense mechanisms to the text. Using textbook examples of defense mechanisms shows just how little control Raskolnikov really has over his own psychology. When setting out to commit the murder Raskolnikov is convinced he can get away with it, specifically because he will use his reason and not allow emotion to get in the way. Raskolnikov believes that the reason most crimes are badly concealed and easily detected “lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential.” (P. 112) Raskolnikov believes this “failure of will” is an avoidable circumstance, and further believes that he will not suffer the failure himself, because in his mind his actions are “not a crime.” His entire reasoning process relies on the idea that murdering the pawnbroker is not actually a crime, and that consciously remembering this fact will be enough to keep him sane and safe after the act is committed.

Right from the beginning, however, he runs into problems. His plan does not go as smoothly as he had anticipated, with one problem after another piling up and straining his nerves, culminating in the pawnbroker’s sister coming in at the wrong time and Raskolnikov being forced to murder her as well. No matter how thoroughly he had rationalized the murder of the pawnbroker, he did not anticipate the sister and so he has no justification for her death. This unjustified murder pokes holes in Raskolnikov’s carefully thought out reasoning process, and his own brain begins to betray him. Raskolnikov reacts psychologically to the murders, even as he endeavors to explain his actions rationally. By showing us these psychological defense mechanisms, Dostoyevsky argues that even the most well-reasoned justification is no match for the emotional turmoil that follows a crime. Raskolnikov’s guilt is his punishment, and all the defense mechanisms in existence cannot protect him from it.

Since I’ve been tutoring English literature students, I’ve noticed a pattern: every time we read a book that I remember reading in my high school classes, I enjoy it far more as an adult than I ever did as a teenager. Time and time again I pick up a book I remember hating in class, resigned to slog through it and discuss metaphor and symbolism with my student, only to find that I thoroughly enjoy it. Each time I come out of the unit with a fresh new appreciation for the work in question. As this happens more and more I’ve come to the conclusion that there are whole worlds of theme and subtext in many novels that are only apparent to a reader who has reached adulthood, because they require the reader to have experiences beyond those of an average high-school student. In today’s Literature Spotlight I’d like to illustrate this point using a recently-transformed work for me, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. One of the main themes in A Doll’s House is the idea of Nora’s reluctance to grow up. This theme and all of its associated points are much more clearly apparent if the reader has already had the experience that Nora is undergoing.

One main point associated with this theme of growing up is the idea that actions have consequences. Specifically, that borrowing money creates a responsibility to the lender. A healthy borrowing relationship relies on a level of respect for the lender. Early in the play, while talking obliquely about the idea of borrowing money, Nora and her husband Torvald have this exchange:

Torvald: Yes, but what about the people who had lent it?
Nora: They? Who would bother about them? I should not know who they were. (P. 6)

This idea that she does not even care who is lending her the money is troubling, and indicates that she is only concerned about being able to maintain her perfect home. If that means she needs more money for fancy clothing or Christmas presents, then she’ll simply borrow it from next month’s paycheck. When questioned about what she would do if he suddenly dropped dead and there was no next month’s paycheck, her response is simply “If that were to happen, I don’t suppose I should care whether I owed money or not.” (P. 6) The hypothetical becomes real when Nora borrows money from Krogstad. As expected, she has no respect for him at all, even though she knows exactly who is lending her the money. When he challenges her to think of his family, she waves the issue aside. This resistance to thinking about money realistically is just one illustration of Nora’s reluctance to accept the responsibilities of being an adult.

In many households, teenagers are given an allowance or allowed to use their parents’ credit card and very little consequences are present for wild spending. Teenagers do not have to pay bills or make mortgage or car payments, and so the idea that borrowing money is a responsibility is harder for them to understand. By and large, they are not as aware of the lender/borrower dynamic because their primary lender is the “bank of Dad” and he is likely to forgive them rather than insist on consequences. Compare Nora in Act 1 to the average teenager. When Nora begs Torvald for money at the beginning of the play, her dialogue is very reminiscent of a child begging for an advance on their allowance. The relationship between Torvald and Nora at this point is far more parent and child than it is husband and wife, which ties back in to the central idea that Nora is Torvald’s plaything. But this relationship is difficult for teenagers to recognize as unusual, since the play is primarily from Nora’s point of view and Nora’s part of the relationship is the part that teenagers tend to inhabit with their parents. Only with a bit of distance does it become apparent how strange it is that a married couple would have such a dynamic.

A second point associated with the main theme of growing up is the idea that life is complicated and messy. At the start of the play, Nora has been relatively successful at maintaining her idyllic life. She twitters about, singing like a skylark, and when problems begin to arise, she tries desperately to cling to her carefree life. Two symbols used in the expression of this theme are the Christmas tree and the fancy dress-ball. When confronted with impending problems Nora fusses over the tree, the dress, and the tarantella to distract her from dealing with them. She believes if she can just get the tree to look perfect, everything will be fine, and clings desperately to that belief even as her mountain of secrets and lies begins to crumble down around her.

Nora often talks about how wonderful it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about anything. Clearly, she is aware on some level that she’s not approaching these issues in a useful way, but she resists changing because that would mean acknowledging the possibility that her life is not really as happy as she believes it to be. She wants everything to work itself out so she can go back to playing with the children and being carefree, but life doesn’t work that way, and sooner or later you have to confront the hard problems. This concept probably goes over most teenagers’ heads because they are still living at home with their parents. Most parents try very hard to give their children an idyllic life; they’ll conceal financial realities from their kids and try their hardest to give off a carefree appearance. Parents want to shelter their kids from the harsh reality of life – but those kids will be adults soon and they will have to learn the truth one way or another. At some point, everyone has to come to the realization that their life is not as perfect as they once thought it to be. For most high-school readers, however, this realization won’t happen for several more years, and the theme is more easily apparent to a reader who has already gone through the process.

In Act 3, Nora forces Torvald to have a hard conversation, and then decides that she needs to leave him, if only for now. This is Nora having that realization – life is messy, and marriage is more than just flitting around like a songbird dressing the Christmas tree and playing hide-and-seek with the children. Two statements in her conversation with Torvald illustrate the thoroughness of her realization. The first is when she states, “You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.” (P. 191) Couldn’t that sum up an incredible number of high-school romances! This statement shows a maturity of thought and emotion on Nora’s part that is rare in the still-developing brain of a teenage high-school student. Loving someone is more than just being in love with them. It’s about accepting another person into your life, faults and all, and working continually to improve each other in an equal and fair relationship. Nora received none of this from Torvald, nor did she give it. Teenagers having little or no experience with deep and loving relationships may be confused by her statement, but to the married adult, who understands that marriage is more about standing in line at Home Depot than it is about grand and romantic gestures, her comment makes a great deal of sense.

The second statement comes when she tells Torvald, “No, I have never been happy…only merry.” (P. 192) She has realized that flitting around like a songbird is not the same as being truly content with her life. Real happiness is the conscious knowledge that you are being true to yourself and are in the place you would like to be, professionally and personally. Nora realizes that she’s been nothing but a doll to her husband, and her father before him, and that she needs to go off on her own and find out who she is. This is Ibsen’s brilliant depiction of the experience of waking up one morning realizing you’re unhappy with your life and you need to make a change – quit your job, travel the world, and figure out what things and people you need in your life to be happy. This sort of soul-searching happens a lot in college and the years soon after, so once again, the average high-school student would not have had this experience.

Nora through the course of this play displays a process of emotional maturing reminiscent of a young adult going through college and a first job, figuring out what they want to do with their life and who they are as a person. High-school students have not yet gone through that process, so it’s harder for them to see the significance of those moments in the context of the play. This is just one example; many novels have themes that share similar qualities of life experience, and are better appreciated as adults than as teenagers. We tend to forget that a teenager’s brain, physiologically, is not finished developing yet, and new connections and pathways will continue to emerge until well into adulthood. Other novels that have given me this experience upon rereading with students include The Good Earth and The Scarlet Letter. So a final note to all my adult readers: give those old high-school novels another shot. You just might find that you thoroughly enjoy them as adults.